Never render the full layout in a Rails view when called via AJAX (See related posts)

Essential for degradable javascript, when one never knows if a view or partial is being called via XmlHttpRequest or not. Throw the below code in your ApplicationController (application.rb)

More info in this blog post

def render(*args)
        args.first[:layout] = false if request.xhr? and args.first[:layout].nil?
        super
end